


There’s No Place Like Home (For the Holidays)

by orphan_account



Category: The West Wing
Genre: Christmas Fluff, F/M, Families of Choice, Friendship/Love, Hanukkah, Holidays, Jewish Character, Kids, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-27
Updated: 2019-12-27
Packaged: 2021-02-26 21:15:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21975469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Little Joanie zoomed down the stairs, careening around the corner and almost toppling her father right over as he jumped out of her way."Joanie, Joanie! Joanie don’t even think about going outside without your —" The front door whooshed open and a blast of freezing cold air swept inside.Josh just stared after her for a moment, then turned and yelled up the stairs, "DONNA!"
Relationships: C. J. Cregg/Toby Ziegler, Josh Lyman/Donna Moss
Comments: 2
Kudos: 54





	There’s No Place Like Home (For the Holidays)

**Author's Note:**

> Earlier this month, my dear friend C (@DeputyDeputyChiefOfStaff) texted me, “I can’t take any more post-Noel fic, I NEED XMAS FLUFF!” So I took that as a prompt and secretly began writing this for her, using other pics that she sent me as further prompts to shape the story. I’m super excited to share it now, though I wish I’d remembered to do it on Christmas day!
> 
> Happiest of holidays to you, and everyone who reads this. Xoxox Rose

“Ex-mess fluff! Ex-mess fluff!!!!”

Little Joanie zoomed down the stairs, careening around the corner and almost toppling her father right over as he jumped out of her way.

“Joanie, Joanie! Joanie don’t even think about going outside without your —” The front door whooshed open and a blast of freezing cold air swept inside.

Josh just stared after her for a moment, then turned and yelled up the stairs, “DONNA!”

“Mom’s not up yet, Dad.” Leo said sleepily, rubbing his eyes as he came around the corner. “Did Joanie go outside?”

“Yeah, without her hat or mittens.”

“I’ll go make her put them on.” 

Leo was already sitting down on the stairs to pull on his boots over his pajamas. Staring down at the top of his head, Josh was struck speechless once again by the thought, _This is my son._ He had just turned ten. How was that possible? Where had the years gone? Then Leo looked up, his eyes that looked just like Donna’s sparkling and reflecting the light from the Christmas tree. Josh’s heart squeezed painfully in his chest.

“What is it, Dad?” Leo was smiling at him, quizzical. 

“What? Uh, nothing, kiddo, just...” Josh scratched the back of his head, darting a look around, trying to grab some words out of thin air. “Did you uh, did you hear what she was yelling?”

Leo’s smile became a grin and he rolled his eyes. “‘Xmas fluff’. It’s what she’s decided to call snow.”

“Ah. Got it. She’s a weird kid. Gets that from her mother.”

“Actually, Dad,” Leo stood up and took Joanie’s hat and mittens from him. “I think we get all our weirdness from you. Make sure there’s cocoa for when we come back inside and then _presents_!”

And then, with a whoop, Josh’s son threw open the door to join his sister in the gently falling snow.

Josh was standing by the window watching them when he felt a soft touch on his elbow. Donna was at his side, wrapped in the warm fluffy bathrobe that Leo had picked out for her first night of Hanukkah gift. 

“You look cute,” Josh said, grinning. 

She knocked him lightly with her elbow. “Please. I always look cute.”

“How’d you know that?”

“Cuz you always tell me. But mostly because we have a number of mirrors in this house, and I have perfect 20/20 vision.”

Josh grinned and wrapped his arms around her, holding her close while they gazed out the window at their frolicking children. “God, I hope our kids inherit that from you. Speaking of which, have you seen my—“

“On top of the fridge.”

“Oh, right. I put them there when I was...I mean I was looking for...I was doing...”

“There is no earthly reason for your glasses to be on top of the fridge, Josh.”

“Hey, you don’t know that!”

“I do know that.”

Lacking a sufficiently witty retort, Josh settled for hugging Donna closer before tickling her.

“You know I’m not ticklish,” was her deadpan reply. 

“Yeah, but it seemed like a good segue for changing the subject. Hey, Did you know that your daughter has decided to call Christmas ‘Xmas’? Where did she even get that from?”

“Hm, let me think,” Donna half-turned in his arms to look up at him. “Possibly her Jewish father?”

“I’ve never said ‘Xmas’ in my life!”

“But that’s the way you always spell it, and she’s an excellent reader, very advanced for her age.”

“I’m a busy guy,” Josh protested feebly. “I don’t have time to always spell everything out.”

“Plus you always forget the ‘h’. It’s pretty embarrassing.”

“Hey!” Josh turned abruptly, nearly colliding with Sam who had just reached the bottom of the stairs. Even through his indignation Josh had to admit that Sam looked pretty adorable, his cheek still ceased with pillow lines and his hair sleep-rumpled. “I did not invite you to my house on this, the holiest of days, for you to mock my inability to remember how to spell them.”

“Did I sound mocking?” Sam spoke around a yawn, rubbing his left eye. “I only meant to be condescending. Good morning, Donna.”

“Morning, Sam.” Donna stepped forward to give him a hug, then held him at arm’s length to give him a good once-over. “You sleep okay? You kind of look like death.”

“I kind of feel like death. No offense to you guys but why did you decide to settle in the Midwest?”

Sam’s flight should have landed in Chicago two days ago at noon. Instead, thanks to a perfectly normal midwestern weather system that caused massive delays in air travel, he’d landed in the Twin Cities at ten last night and rented a car to drive down to Madison in stop-and-go traffic and arrive at their house long after midnight. Josh had stayed up to let him in and show him to the guest room, but everyone else had been in bed.

Luckily for Sam, Josh was unable to deliver the scathing retort on the tip of his tongue because at that moment the door burst open and the kids ran back in, shouting over each other. Then they noticed Sam, and the incoherent shouts turned into, “Uncle Sam is here! Uncle Sam!”

Donna turned to Josh and murmured, “I thought you were going to tell them he doesn’t like—“

“Oh, I told them. Sort of.” Josh’s face kind of hurt with how hard he was grinning. Sam’s exact words might have been, _It’s really weird to be called ‘Uncle Sam,’ I feel like I should be wearing a star-spangled top hat, could you tell them that just ‘Sam’ is fine?_ but that’s not what Josh had said to his kids. 

A minute later, the reason for Leo and Joanie’s enthusiastic re-entry followed them through the door.

“Merry...whatever!” Toby called out over the din, waving an armload of presents at Josh while CJ hugged Donna.

The kids dashed back out the door before it could shut again, joining Toby’s twins immediately in a snowball fight. 

“Well...” CJ said into the sudden silence that fell once the door swung closed, separating them from the hollering kids. “At least they’ll keep each other busy, huh?”

“Thank God,” Toby mumbled.

“Hey!” Sam was grinning, coming forward to shake Toby’s hand. “You got delayed by the storm too, huh? Did you rent a car or take the bus up from Chicago? You know I heard that after the break they’re going to be reintroducing legislation on extending the high-speed rail throughout the Midwest, I’ve got a buddy in the D.O.T who thinks it might actually go somewhere this time—what?”

CJ was shaking her head and laughing quietly at him, saying as soon as she could get a word in edgewise, “We got diverted to Milwaukee so we stayed overnight with my cousin and just drove in this morning.”

“Oh,” Josh asked, “were you two on the same flight?”

“Well...yes.” CJ’s smile grew, if possible, even brighter, and she and Toby both glanced down. In the silence that followed, so did everyone else. Toby and CJ were holding hands, their fingers interlaced.

“Oh my god...” Donna whispered, then her voice jumped about six octaves. “Ooooh my god, _CJ_!” And then CJ was forced to release her hold on Toby in order to catch Donna, who had flung herself into Donna’s arms. “I can’t believe it, _finally_!”

Sam was clapping Toby on the back, giving him that goofy, open-mouthed grin Josh remembered from when they were young and relatively carefree, certain that they were going to change the world. Josh hadn’t seen much of it the past few years. Then again he hadn’t seen much of Sam these past few years. Of any of them. It was nuts how time could just get away from you like that. But then there you are, with an 8-year-old son and a 5-year-old daughter, two of your best friends shacking up, your two very best friends hanging on their arms to congratulate them. Josh felt like an outsider to the scene though he could feel himself smiling. 

“Does everyone know?” Donna was asking.

“Who’s everyone?” CJ laughed, gave a little gesture around herself to indicate all of them. “ _You’re_ everyone.”

Sam turned then, his full megawatt smile landing on Josh, and it was like hearing your name from across a crowded room and suddenly tuning back in to your surroundings, volume level cranking up, full color returning to the scene.

“All right, all right,” Josh said, taking his hands out of his pockets and ambling towards his friends. “Group hug and then breakfast, I’m starving to death over here and no one even cares. And cocoa, cuz otherwise my son’s gonna pitch us all into a snowbank.”

Josh could feel Sam and Donna’s hands pressed against his back and shoulder. Smell Toby’s cologne and see the glitter of CJ’s necklace as his eyes fluttered shut. 

“Merry Christmas, everyone.”

“And happy Hanukkah,” CJ added.

“Time for PRESENTS???” Came the chorus from outside the door, which was all the warning they got before it flew open and four little snowmen came tumbling inside.


End file.
